Column by Paul Hein
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Suppose you hired a landscape architect, and asked him to submit a plan to beautify your yard. He would ask you what you had in mind. “Well, how about some vegetation?” He might smile at that, or frown; but he would want you to be more specific. “What vegetation would you like?” “You know, green plants, maybe...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
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The Failure of Conventional Schools
Parents and children are frustrated by public schools (85% to 90% of all students). Not only do they do not meet their needs, but they treat parents and children as if they were sick patients instead of as valued customers. Moreover, student needs are superseded by politically sensitive funding...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
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At Libertopia 2011, visitors will have a chance to find out why a group of voluntaryists in San Diego are starting their own school. More specifically, from October 20th through 23rd, the folks from Summum Bonum Learning Center will demonstrate how a school based on intrinsic motivation and freedom can respond to the needs of the children in ways...

Column by Glen Allport.
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The Word
** Love. **
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Start of Commentary Section:
The Word is Complete in Itself
Nothing more is needed, because love includes non-aggression: you don't aggress against others if you love them. The Doctrine of Love and Freedom is thus completely contained in the single word...

Column by Paul Hein.
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Last June, Missouri Congressman Todd Akin made a speech in which he said that liberalism involved “hatred of God.” Needless to say, the professionally touchy were inflamed, and the Congressman was quick to issue an apology. Some local pastors weren’t satisfied with that, however, and sought a face-to-face meeting with Akin at his office....

Column by Robert Taylor
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In the current media climate of talking heads, sound bites, and bumper sticker slogans from politicians, debate--both in public and in private--is severely hampered by a lack of proper definitions of the terms and ideas being discussed.
One could definitely make the cynical argument that this process of dumbing down the language is done...

Column by Lawrence M. Ludlow
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In San Diego this October 20-23, visitors to Libertopia 2011 will have the very first glimpse of a new type of school – the Summum Bonum Learning Center. According to Joey Hill, director and co-founder of the school, “In the spirit of Libertopia, instead of waiting for liberty to happen at some time in the future, we decided to start...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Almost unnoticed amongst the glitter and wonder of modern sci-tech is that the basic, foundational truths of classical liberalism are now exceptionally well supported by science. If you want a society that produces physically and emotionally healthy people and that fosters prosperity, innovation, and peace, you want – you need – both...

Column by Robert Taylor.
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The failure of the state to adequately provide the services that are supposedly the sole domain of government is everywhere evident and an unfortunate fixture of American life. Instead of creating order, it has imposed chaos, cages, and climbing crime rates. While piling up bodies in the name of peace, it had made all of us less safe. But it is in...

Column by tzo.
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Part II of II
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, (Midway upon the journey of our life,)
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, (I found myself within a forest dark,)
Che la diritta via era smarrita. (For the straightforward pathway had been lost.)
Without realizing it, the citizen has gotten off the path that he intended to take. He looks around...

Column by Roger Young.
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The powers-that-be in Dallas are in a tizzy after several locations around the area received envelopes of white powder determined to be corn starch. The popular cooking ingredient was said to be accompanied by a “chilling note.” A spokesman reported that the note said “something to the effect of 'Al-Qaeda in the USA.’...

Column by Paul Hein.
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In considering how one might overthrow the state government, I have decided the safest course is by baby-steps, so to speak. Attacking the requirement to re-new your auto license yearly is a good initial procedure. Not too controversial, and without dire consequences if unsuccessful.
Don’t be put off by the term “overthrow....

Column by Alex R. Knight III.
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I know that I have likely irked some of you already by writing a Christmas-themed column before we have even gotten to Thanksgiving, but I can at least offer the caveat that it will likely not be near as onerous as the fact that the latest crop of political parasites (with all due respect to Ron Paul) have already ramped up their bids to be...

Column by Paul Hein.
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We have two dogs. They are both miniature poodles, pure-bred, with papers (gosh!). What I am about to reveal now may make you despise me and my dogs, but at least give me credit for honesty: our dogs are defective. I cringe to admit it, but it’s true.
A poodle, I have learned from the appropriate authorities, may be any color (...

Column by tzo.
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I am not one to get caught up in labels when it comes to identifying which flavor of non-governmental society one may envision. There are anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, anarcho-socialists, anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, mutualists, voluntaryists, and a long list of others.
I generally choose to use the term voluntaryist for myself, as it seems...

Column by Tim Hartnett.
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The Sicilian proverb that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead is something America’s ruling class might need to consider one day. That point began to jab at the ribs of the old Cosa Nostra itself in November of 1957. When dozens of bosses tried to convene at Joe Barbera’s place in Appalachian, New York townies noticed...

Column by Jim Davies.
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Last month in The Thirteenth Year, I suggested a few dreadful government actions that would make 2013 memorable. I missed one: mea culpa. This was the year in which a minor government in the Mediterranean turned an island into a verb. Its subject is a government, its object is the money someone holds in a bank in its jurisdiction, and its meaning is that the...

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The heavy-handed tactics used recently by police against G20 protesters in Pittsburgh has Constitutionalists up in arms once again about the government's infringement upon the human right of free speech, which is protected by the First Amendment. If anyone knows anything about America, it is supposedly this—all Americans have the right to free speech.
But just when, exactly...

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Introduction
There was a time here on Earth when human beings did not yet exist, and now here we are. From this simple observation, it logically follows that X created human beings.
But who or what is X? That is the million-dollar question that I am absolutely not interested in answering here.
Because whether the answer is God, Tao, Mother Nature,...

Column by D. Saul Weiner.
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There are a lot of heated exchanges going on right now in social media related to vaccination. Many people have become convinced that parents who do not vaccinate are jeopardizing the health of others and that vaccines for children should be mandated. Politicians who are expected to run for president in 2016 are starting to weigh in on the topic and some...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Introduction for this 2013 Edition
As I write this – October 28, 2013, more than four years after the column below was posted (here with minor edits; see the original at this link if you wish) – NBC News is reporting that the Obama administration “knew millions could not keep their health insurance" under Obamacare, and has known...

Column by Alex R. Knight III.
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Perhaps never before have I encountered a proposal within Liberty Movement circles that has generated more controversy faster and further than Adam Kokesh’s planned July 4th march on Washington, District of Criminals, in which he states that himself and the other participants “will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to...

Column by Faisal Moghul.
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Almost 30 years ago, cultural critic Neil Postman argued in Amusing Ourselves to Death that television’s gradual replacement of the printing press has created a dumbed-down culture driven by mindless entertainment. In this context, Postman claimed that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World correctly foresaw our dystopian future, as opposed to George...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Perhaps I should say this paradigm shift is resuming. The healthier incoming paradigm is a modern, more accurate, better-supported, and better-understood version of one that began the shift towards a free, healthy, and prosperous world more than three centuries ago and which informed the creation of the United States itself: Classical Liberalism.
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Column by Glen Allport.
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Part 3 of "Could the Non-Aggression Principle Stop the Sixth Great Extinction?"
Part One of this series discussed the Non-Aggression principle, calling it "the libertarian half of the Golden Rule" (compassion being the other half) and describing the function of aggression in creating not only tyranny and war but also...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Question: are you more terrified by Muslim extremists, by "domestic terrorists" – or by your own government? Which group is more likely to assault you? To kill you? To unjustly imprison and even torture you?
The U.S. federal government has ALREADY:
Built and is staffing a huge gulag of concentration camps [...

Column by JGVibes.
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Although the common perception of human nature is very negative, the truth is that most people who aren’t mentally ill have a very difficult time committing acts of violence. Usually it takes a sizeable payment and a fair amount of manipulation to convince someone to act violently, and even then a tremendous amount of guilt typically...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Plundering Wealth vs Producing Wealth
In recent decades, the rich have gathered an increasing share of the total wealth in the United States. As this wealth disparity grows and especially as large numbers of the formerly middle class fall into poverty and even into homelessness, this flow of wealth from main street (from anyone not...

Column by Glen Allport.
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This is Part 2 of a response to a column by Wesley Messamore. Last week's Part One of this column discussed the following:
· Minarchy: Lighting a Match to the Fuse of Tyranny
· Anarchy: By Itself, Yang without Yin
· The Missing Key...

Column by L.K. Samuels.
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Chaos gets a bad rap—from the academic and scientific world, even from some uninformed libertarians. Few people realize that without the dynamics of chaos, order would not exist. In fact, nothing would exist. Without chaos there would be no creation, no structure and no existence. After all, order is merely the repetition of patterns; chaos is the...

Column by Paul Bonneau.
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I was reading an article about Roger Williams. The more I learn about him, the more impressed I become.
﻿"Roger Williams was not a man out of time. He belonged to the 17th Century and to Puritans in that century. Yet he was also one of the most remarkable men of his or any century. With absolute faith in the literal truth of the Bible and in his...

Column by Jim Davies.
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I've been continuing to read the fascinating story of the modern libertarian movement's early years, as told in the Libertarian Forum, edited and often written by Murray Rothbard. It's vast, but very worthwhile – warmly recommended. I've supplemented it recently with a re-read of parts of Justin Raimondo's excellent biography of him...

Column by Glen Allport.
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Whoever cannot hit the nail on the head should please, not hit it at all. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Image of The Ring of Power from Wikimedia Commons
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If I had the Ring of Power, I would only use it for GOOD!
Recently, I was reminded that to at least some extent, left-leaning libertarians and anarchists do not understand that...

Column by Alex R. Knight III.
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During my years as a practicing alcoholic, I employed any number of tactics to avoid the ultimately invariable conclusion that in order to solve my numerous problems, I needed to stop drinking altogether.
Even long after I had made the inner admission that I was, in all likelihood, suffering from the disease – and I knew or understood very...

The article below contains excerpts from L.K. Samuels’ new book, In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action.
Column by L.K. Samuels.
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Good intentions rarely make good laws. Those who do evil almost always think they are doing good for goodness’ sake. Nobody sees himself as evil. As Will Smith, the American actor, once quipped, “...

Column by Jim Davies.
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Prior to Harry Browne's first run for US President in 1996, his friend John Pugsley wrote him a passionate “open letter” urging him not to. As far as I know, Harry didn't reply, but he did continue his campaign – and repeated it four years later. He got few votes more than the LP normally receives, but his platform and campaign were...

Column by Greg Haley.
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Ed Schultz has set quite the task out for himself. On his New Year’s Eve broadcast on MSNBC, he announced who his “Middle Class Heroes of 2012” are.
Schultz is a self-styled liberal, so his recipients of the title “Middle Class Hero” are predictable and worthy of a certain amount of eye rolling. The general reverence for...

Column by tzo.
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To anyone who has seen or read The Reader (a synopsis of the relevant part of the story is here), one of the main questions raised in the story is, "What should be done with Hanna?"
Was she responsible for her actions even if she was so thoroughly indoctrinated so as to be completely confused by the charges against her? She asked more than once, while...

Column by Jim Davies.
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Recently I re-read part of that seminal essay, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de la Boëtie, written in 1548, or 464 years ago. He said that if you want to topple a tyrant, all you need to do is to withdraw support. No violence, no sweat, just stop helping him.
Yet 24 years later there was a massacre of Huguenot Protestants, indicating that...